Introduction by Nick Price, Head of Water Resources
We need resilient water resources to make sure we have enough water for the future, especially as we operate in a water-stressed area where there is a growing population and a precious environment to protect.
We’ve set out how we’ll provide a reliable and resilient drinking water supply over the next 50 years in our revised draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 (rWRMP24) which was published in August 2023 with our consultation Statement of Response. This puts a strong focus on managing and reducing demand for water by cutting leaks, and through smart metering and water efficiency programmes. The plan also considers a range of future possible scenarios so we can adapt depending on how the population grows and how climate change continues to impact us.
The Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP) is a key driver of our approach as it requires us to deliver improvement schemes that protect and enhance the natural environment with sustainability at their heart. We must develop new water sources as there will be fewer and more constrained abstraction licences in future. One way we’re doing this is by speeding up the Broad Oak reservoir scheme in East Kent for delivery in 2033. We’re also planning a second reservoir for Arlington in the future.
In 2023/24 we experienced some key challenges, including a long period of very dry weather and the hottest June on record. This resulted in record-breaking water use so we had to introduce a temporary use ban to bring demand down to maintain supplies.
Tackling leakage is a high priority for us and for our customers and we’ve continued to find and fix leaks across our network to protect water supplies and make them resilient for the future. We’ve invested in more gangs to detect and fix more leaks and reduced leakage and invested in more technology. We’re also exploring new ways to reline older and leaking pipes to minimise disruption to customers.
During 2023/24 our customers each used an average of 143.4 litres of water a day, a 4.6 per cent reduction on 2022/23, achieved through a proactive water efficiency programme which has included issuing free water-saving devices and awareness campaigns.
Work is progressing on our new £39 million water treatments works near Maidstone which, when complete in March 2025, will supply up to 22 million litres of additional water. We were delighted to showcase the project, which is in partial use now, to Water Minister Robbie Moore MP during a site visit. In January we won the Utility Week Infrastructure Delivery Award for a three-year project, completed in August, to restore drinking water storage tanks damaged by multiple sinkholes near Maidstone in 2020.
We’re trialling an initiative in an area which has experienced several supply interruptions recently, to identify opportunities to reduce demand and increase supply by reviewing the entire water cycle. Aerial surveys are helping us learn more about water usage in the Challock and Molash area, near Canterbury.
We’ve redesigned the Bewl-Darwell water resource project to provide greater resilience benefits for customers. The purpose of the scheme is to prevent the spread of invasive species between catchments and so in future we will stop abstracting from Darwell reservoir and take water from Bewl Water reservoir instead. The scheme requires an upgrade at Bewl treatment works and some new pipelines to allow water from Bewl to support two water resource zones in Sussex. Although it’ll be partially complete in March 2025, the scheme redesign will impact on the final completion schedule.
During the past year we have refurbished 10 boreholes to prevent them degrading and to improve and optimise borehole yield. We also surveyed a further four boreholes to determine their condition as part of a wider borehole maintenance and monitoring programme.
We’ve made solid progress in rolling out new meters to some larger non household customers to measure their demand more accurately and to improve our water balance assessment. We’re also supporting non-household customers (schools, farms etc) with water efficiency audits to help reduce their consumption.
As part of our drought planning, we’ve started to review our Drought Plan trigger curves for Ardingly and Arlington reservoirs which inform the timing of the actions we take to avoid reservoirs running dry during droughts. We’re also looking at how we can refill Arlington reservoir with better quality water during periods of intense rainfall. Heavy downpours affect raw water quality, leading to higher treatment costs.
Our key measures
